“The Last Slide Projector” is a documentary film that tells the story of the production of the last Carousel slide projector by Eastman Kodak. The film documents the end of an era and traces the varied histories of an apparatus and a medium that have been central to family memories, to education, to art history and to the development of both cinema and corporate culture.
Beginning with Kodak's announcement of their decision to cease production and ending with a home movie-style digital video that documents the assembly of the last projector in Rochester, NY, the film chronicles the stories of people who were intimately involved with the production and use of the projector. The film also considers the Carousel projector's role in the story of the Eastman Kodak company and how recent changes in the company reflect shifts in American manufacturing more broadly. A prime example of the transition from the analog to the digital, “The Last Slide Projector” is a personal meditation on the idea of technological progress and the impulse towards nostalgia that loss and endings often inspire.
Paige Sarlin is a filmmaker, activist, and curator. She has an M.F.A. in Film, Video and New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was awarded a Joukowsky Presidential Fellowship by Brown University where she is currently pursuing her Doctorate in Modern Culture and Media. Her drawings and installations have been exhibited in a number of galleries and museums internationally including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and Halle 14 in Leipzig, Germany.
Her first documentary “The Last Slide Projector” had its world premiere at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in January 2007. Since 1999 she has been an active participant in 16 Beaver Group in New York City, a platform for the discussion of the intersection of art and politics. Paige is one of the curators of Magic Lantern Cinema, an experimental film and video series in Providence, Rhode Island. Currently she is in Macedonia beginning to work on a documentary about the consequences of a number of American democracy-promoting initiatives.
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